Horror Huggies; The Movie

("Disney's Horror Huggies" 2012 Paint & Photoshop)

There is no actual Horror Huggies movie, but how friggin' cool would that be? Am I right? I'm just a big fan of 2D animation, particularly classic Disney style. I wanted to make an illustration telling a narrative of some toys trying to get out of a toy store. I used a similar process that Disney animators use. The background is painted as one layer. The painterly quality makes it sort of blurry and not as sharply rendered as the characters, which helps them stand out from the background. It's a pretty common trick in photography and painting as well as animation. I then drew the characters on a piece of tracing paper, uploaded them to my laptop, and colored them in in Photoshop. The outlines, instead of just black, are all darker versions of what ever color the character is. The bear is outlined in dark brown, the bunny in dark purple. This helps the character look cleaner and more like part of the scene, while still clearly being 2D. I've always been interested in animation, although I don't think I would have the patience necessary to make cartoons. That stuff takes a LOT of work. But it was nice to see what Horror Huggies might look like in a cartoon form. 

The idea here was to draw the soul of an abused and forgotten toy rising out, sort of breaking out of a shell. I think I would like to do another piece like this with more of a background to add to that narrative, but at the time, I thought it would be best to concentrate on the three creatures. 

I decided to give each one a primary color, blue, yellow, and red. Partly to separate them from each other, but also because that specific combination of colors is a very common pallet used in plastic children's toys, and I so it seemed entirely appropriate given that these things are rising out of a broken toy.

Antisocial

("Antisocial" 2014. Photoshop)

There isn't much to say about this picture. It's a simple enough message. I wanted to do an illustration of a child being protected by their imaginary friends, lashing out with these make believe monsters. I sketched out a few variations of this idea, and I'd like to work on some of the others later on. I think my favorite part is probably the cooties buzzing around the above. It was fun trying to picture what cooties would actually look like.

Crocodactyl or Pterodile

("Crocodactyl or Pterodile" 2014, Digital)

In my library there is a very large book of reptiles I got when I was a kid. Every once in a while I flip through it, as well as a number of other volumes full of pictures and illustrations of animals, to find ideas for interesting things to sketch. One day I decided to take an already deadly and terrifying animal, and add wings to it. I like bat wings, they're fun to draw and they lend a sort of nightmare like quality to anything you draw them on. Thus was born this thing which I have yet to choose a name for. As you've probably figured out, I'm stuck between either Crocodactyl or Pterodile. I kind of like Pterodile best I think

I started with a basic sketch, then once I had a clear idea of what I wanted, I made a larger more detailed drawing, (seen below) then I cut up that drawing into smaller pieces, scanned each piece into my computer, and then put the pieces back together again in photoshop (see below again) then I colored it in. I did a similar project a little before this one with a dragon's head. If I have not posted that already I will most likely do so soon, but for now you'll just have to settle for a big crocodile with bat wings. 

(Aimee Self Portrait, Photoshop, 2014)

In a world of amateur selfie enthusiasts a handful of interesting or inspiring photos do occasionally make it onto the various social media websites. Every now and then when a friend of mine posts a particularly nice facebook photo, I ask for their permission to use it as a reference for a sketch or portrait piece. When my friend Aimee posted a photo of her holding a small puppy, I thought it might be fun to draw her holding something more ridiculous.

Portraiture is not my greatest strength and I spent a few days making sketches of the face until I had it right. After that it was a matter of taping the face to a piece of cardboard, placing some tracing paper over it, and sketching various backgrounds, bodies, and scenarios. I knew I wanted to draw her holding something ridiculous and I liked this version the best, so I scanned it onto my mac book and got to work.

It was a fun little side project, and good practice for portraiture, which is a handy skill to have. Aimee was very please with how it came out, as was I =)

"Playtime" Break Down

( "Playtime" 2014, Photoshop )

Some of you may have heard of this new online role playing game called League Of Legends (LOL for short). This piece was inspired by Jinx, one of the characters from this game.

HERE is a fantastic music video of her and her kick-ass theme song played by the group Djerv. It is one of my absolute favorite songs now!

After seeing this video and admiring the Harley Quin-esk novelty of her weapons, I was inspired to design my own colorful weapons of fluffy destruction! so I purchased a cheap plastic shotgun and set to work on painting and decorating it. (see below)

The end result wasn't bad, but it looked a bit more handmade than what I was going for. In the end, I took a few photos of it, and decided to use it as a reference for an illustration piece instead. 

I was much more pleased with the illustration than the original gun. I ended up taking the gun apart and saving bits and pieces of it (the bunny, the teddy head, the pink ribbons, etc.) for future attempts.I do have some soft plans to work on making some rubber ducky grenades of my own, but I have no strict plans as of yet.

Zombie T-rex Self Portrait

That's right! I located my lost password for this account and am back online! My apologies for the lack of posts. I will be posting regularly again from this point on into the foreseeable future, I have a lot of projects and photos to share with you all, so buckle up! And what better way to kick off my return than with this epic portrait of yours truly riding an undead T-rex?

("Science Bitches" Digital Piece 2014)

Generally. great art is made to convey powerful emotions and important messages to people. It is a medium through which all artists can communicate with the rest of the world... most of the time. Sometimes, you just get an idea for something awesome that you really want to draw! This was one of those times. Who among us has never wanted to ride a giant zombie dinosaur at some time or another?

This piece was colored in Photoshop but the I worked from an original sketch. Above is the finished outline after the sketch was scanned into my computer and traced over in Illustrator. Below is the original drawing that I scanned to start with. Here we see the transition from rough draft, to finish sketch, to final copy.